Ă

This article does not have any sources. You can help Wikipedia by finding good sources, and adding them. (October 2025)

Ă (uppercase: Ă, lowercase: ă) is a letter in the Latin alphabet. It is made by adding a small mark called a breve (˘) to the letter A. This letter is used in Romanian and Vietnamese languages.

How it sounds

• Romanian: In Romanian, ă sounds like the mid-central vowel, which is similar to the sound of a in the English word “Canada”. This sound is called a schwa. It is a very common sound in Romanian and appears in many words.
  • Example: The word “măr” (apple) uses ă and is pronounced like “mər”.
  • Another example: The word “fată” (girl) uses ă and is pronounced like “fata”.
• Vietnamese: In Vietnamese, ă represents a "short a" sound. It is different from the regular a sound in Vietnamese, which is longer.
  • Example: The word “ăn” (eat) uses ă and is pronounced like “an”.
  • Another example: The word “cắt” (cut) uses ă and is pronounced like “cat”.

Usage in Romanian

In Romanian, the letter ă is very important. It is the second most common letter in the Romanian alphabet. It appears in many common words and is used in both formal and informal writing. The sound it represents is similar to the unstressed “a” in English words like “sofa” or “sofa”.

Usage in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, ă is used to represent a short vowel sound. Vietnamese is a tonal language, which means that the meaning of a word can change depending on the tone used. The letter ă can appear with different tones, which changes the meaning of the word. For example:

• chăn (blanket/herd) - with a rising tone.
• chẵn (round) - with a falling-rising tone.

Unicode

The letter Ă has special codes in computers:

• Uppercase Ă: U+0102
• Lowercase ă: U+0103

These codes are used to represent the letter in digital text.